DoD/Fed Network Engineers - Are you struggling to move up in your career/knowledge?

I work in the government/fed sector where you typically need a clearance from an agency or department to perform any IT work. The pay is really good and jobs are far from scarce.. I get about 4 hit ups for a new a job every single week. What i am struggling with is staying up to date with technologies and getting meaningful experience under my belt. I've worked as a "Network Engineer" for a couple of contracting companies ,but this mostly entailed doing VLAN changes or copy n' pasting configurations. Literally getting paid 115k+ to sit on my butt and do about an hours worth of work a week. To some of you this might sound awsome ,but to me its not. I'd like to start getting my hands on with SD-WAN, EVPN/ACI/NSX, AWS, and etc.. Outside of work i do a lot of studying. I currently have my CCNP and currently working on AWS SA plus studying python automation ,but home labbing and theory isn't enough if all your doing is mundane tasks at work.

TLDR; I work as a fed contractor and get paid a lot to do easy tasks. i'd like to start getting my hands with more advanced technologies and projects. any other fed contractors experiencing this issue?